1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a computer program for performing 3D measurement of an object to be measured.
2. Description of the Related Art
A 3D shape measurement apparatus has been broadly used in various fields including product examination in factories in an industrial field and shape measurement of living bodies in a medical field. In particular, a non-contact measurement method is efficient in a case where a target object may be deformed or destroyed when being touched.
As non-contact 3D shape measurement, a method for performing triangulation on an image using image pickup means is widely used. As a more concrete example, Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2001-356010 discloses an example in which a 3D shape measurement is performed by projecting a grid pattern on an object using a projector and capturing an image using image pickup means. More specifically, projection is performed such that a grid pattern formed by vertical lines and horizontal lines is used as a projection pattern while 2D code pattern are embedded in rectangles defined by a grid, and 2D positions on the projected pattern and 2D positions in a captured image are associated with each other.
Corresponding of lines which constitute the grid pattern is performed using the 2D positions on the projected pattern and the 2D positions on the captured image which correspond to each other so that 3D shape measurement is performed using triangulation employing a light-section method. However, in the Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2001-356010 described above, grids which define the rectangles should exist in the same continuous plane for detection of the 2D patterns embedded in the rectangles. Therefore, there arises a problem in that, under a condition in which a sufficient area of a plane in vertical and horizontal directions is not obtained such as a rough region or a narrow region, the pattern is not appropriately detected resulting in an error of 3D shape measurement.